At 50, Levittown Contends With Its Legacy of Bias

By BRUCE LAMBERT

Published: December 28, 1997

LEVITTOWN, N.Y., Dec. 23—
The year-long 50th-birthday party for this pioneering suburb on Long Island is winding down. The parade drew 5,000 marchers. Crowds came for candlelight church services, an antique-car show, exhibits, seminars and tours of the fabled Levitt houses that started it all.

There were even Potato Day festivities honoring the flat farmland here where Levitt & Sons began mass-producing single-family tract homes in 1947, heralding the wave of migration from cities that lasted for decades.

But not everyone touched by the Levittown experience has been celebrating.

''The anniversary leaves me cold,'' said Eugene Burnett, who was among thousands of military veterans who lined up for their green patch of the American dream here after World War II. But he was turned away because he is black. ''It's symbolic of segregation in America,'' he said. ''That's the legacy of Levittown.

''When I hear 'Levittown,' what rings in my mind is when the salesman said: 'It's not me, you see, but the owners of this development have not as yet decided whether they're going to sell these homes to Negroes,' '' Mr. Burnett, now a retired Suffolk County police sergeant, recalled. He said he still stings from ''the feeling of rejection on that long ride back to Harlem.''

The salesman was not honest with Mr. Burnett. Blacks and other minorities had no chance of getting in, because Levitt had decided from the start to admit only whites.

Delano Stewart, editor of The Point of View, a Long Island biweekly on black affairs, said of Levittown: ''It's something we'd like to forget rather than celebrate. It's a black mark on the Island, or maybe I should say a white mark.''

The whites-only policy was not some unspoken gentlemen's agreement. It was cast in bold capital letters in clause 25 of the standard lease for the first Levitt houses, which included an option to buy.

It stated that the home could not ''be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.''

That clause was dropped in 1948 after the United States Supreme Court, ruling on another case, declared such restrictions to be ''unenforceable as law and contrary to public policy.''

Ignoring the law of the land, however, Levitt continued adhering to its racial bar. Levittown quickly filled up with young white families. Minority residents trickled in during the 1950's, but the pattern was set.

Today Levittown has changed, but only a little. While the community has more minority residents than ever, it remains overwhelmingly white -- 97.37 percent in the 1990 census.

''It's certainly not a melting pot, but it is a community in transition,'' said James A. Edmondson, the chief executive of the Yours, Ours, Mine Community Center in Levittown, who is black. ''Ethnically it's changing every day, and in 25 years it won't look like it does today.''

Although blacks account for 8 percent of Long Island's population, they are scarce here. Of Levittown's 53,286 residents in 1990, there were 51,883 whites, 2,184 Hispanic people, 950 Asians and Pacific Islanders, 137 blacks (0.26 percent), 31 American Indians and Aleuts and 285 ''other.''

Most blacks intent on moving to Long Island ended up in the few ''open housing'' communities, which became predominantly minority pockets. ''We didn't have many other choices,'' said Mr. Burnett, who lives in Wyandanch, in Suffolk County.

As a result, ''Nassau County is the most segregated suburban county in the United States,'' said Dr. Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College. He based that view on a computer study of national census data, in which he calculated what portion of the population of each county would have to move to achieve racial integration.

Living by Rules They Did Not Make

Whenever historians, planners and sociologists plumb the lessons of Levittown, race always looms. The debate is not simple or comfortable, especially for people here. Early Levittowners moved here under rules favoring them that they did not make. Later arrivals inherited a history that they did not create.

''There is a sensitivity to it, because the community has for many years tried to overcome that image,'' said Louise Cassano, a co-chairwoman of the Levittown 50th-Anniversary Committee and a resident since 1951. ''There was that lingering prejudice,'' she said, ''but I think we've come a long way.''

At the outset, some whites here fought racism, forming the Committee to End Discrimination in Levittown. There were protests and a leaflet against ''Jim Crowism,'' Mrs. Cassano said. ''Some people moved in very unaware of the Caucasian clause and were disturbed when they found out,'' she said.

In the second Levittown, near Philadelphia, angry white mobs threw rocks in 1957 to protest the prospect of blacks moving in. In the response back here, the Levittown Democratic Club, Jewish War Veterans and a Protestant minister all spoke up for open housing.

But this Levittown has had its share of bigots. The Levittown Historical Society's president, Polly Dwyer, recalled one incident: ''An Asian family moved in, and some people moved out because of them. It's so silly. They were good, quiet, decent people.''